Dollhouse Series Finale – Epitaph 2: Return

Lets do a short recap of the cool stuff that happened lately in the show. The Epitaph recap is at the end and contain spoilers, you have been warned.

A Senator is mind controlled and sent after the LA Dollhouse (2.05). Echo kicked ass in that episode. But thats when the Disruptor was developed. Summer Glau is introduced as the glitchy doctor Bennett of DC Dollhouse. Her comment to the captured Echo ‘Caroline, you always promised you come back to me. Lets play.’ before starting to torture her is mentionable. Bennet really have issues with Echo/Caroline blaming her for her injured arm and leaving her to be captured.

Dushku and Glau is a striking pair. (2.06) Thoper comes across as rather juvenile when Adelle and he has to deal with Lipman, the head of the DC Dollhouse (Ray Wise played the devil in Reaper). Ray has sinister down pat but Adelle has him literary by the balls.

Victor dolled up as Thoper as a stand in while the real Thoper is in DC was a real highlight.

It’s also the episode Echo looses her chip. But Bennett and Thoper work out a way to use the Disruptor without the chip (Brave new world here we go). Bennett use it to send a kill command to the senator to kill Echo.

Pity Thoper that really had it going with Bennett. Then he had to go and hit her. At least we learn that Echo is a very special little doll, with powers of her own to get people to like her.

The senator covers for the Dollhouse but Echo wanders off aimlessly into DC.

Street-lady Echo is also memorable (2.07). Three months later she is a perky nurse, all by her self, rescuing an illegal immigrant she put into jail by an act of kindness. Paul and Echo have some sexy moments there while on the run.

Echo starts to go totally Rain Man, all her personalities decide to help each other out. This is when Echo gets her training before going back into the Dollhouse.

Meanwhile Harding is in charge of the Dollhouse with Adelle waiting on him hand and foot. Boyd and Paul is conspiring to help. Thoper invents Remote whipes. The countdown has started. The revelation of the centers’ long time goal to remotely take control over peoples minds with the technology developed in separate parts at different centers didn’t surprise. And Thoper had already invented it and Adele betrays him and give it to the corporation, she is a cool heartless bitch again and in control of the LA house.

Adelle doesn’t buy Echos return and put her in a straightjacket(2.08) and look for something she suspects. When they finally decide to imprint her again, Topher finds out to his chock that he is obsolete, Echo can change into any of her previous imprints at will.

Alpha comes back and hunt down and kill Echo’s past romantic clients one by one . Hes trick with Sierra and the bomb vest is epic.

He unleashes the violence of the future in the Dollhouse so he can kill Echo’s last romantic interest, Paul Ballard. Alpha and Echo’s fight turns very emotional when Alpha turns on the then believed dead Paul’s personality. Echo can’t kill him so Alpha escapes.

Victor’s love for Sierra surpasses imprinting, which Adelle finds out to her chock when she lonely hearts him. That’s the last mission before Victor is released from his contract. Sierra and Victor’s love story has been a delight to us viewers for the duration, it’s a beautiful thing. No one is surprised when Victor still misses her even when he got his real memories back.

He is slightly interrupted by the company’s hive mind soldiers kidnapping though. Victor is implanted with a hive mind device and recruited into Rossum’s private army. Echo have to download an army to break him free and restore Sierra to Priya. Echo puts in a hive chip and broadcast all her personalities to the hive and distract the hives so Victor and Sierra can escape. Priya and Victor’s smalltalk during the fight was amusing, so you are from Australia?

Adelle goes totally bonkers and decide to throw Echo into the Attic(2.10). Caroline Farrell (Echo) escape the Attic and frees Sierra and Victor only to see them die in the attempt, it all takes place in her mind, the endless nightmares. Echo has to fight a very personal battle.

Meanwhile Thoper is patching Paul’s mind together again, they need a new Victor.

Ivy is worth a mention, I like her as that agent in NCIS, here she has a smaller role as Thoper’s assistant, but one I quite enjoyed anyway.

We find out that all the minds of the Attic is connected. Echo finds a way to travel between their minds, but she soon get lost.

Great story twist with the Attic being the Rossum’s main frame. One of the founders of Rossum is in there killing off the cpu’s and try to stop the things to come. Caroline has the knowledge to stop it, but Echo doesn’t have her memories any more. But she finds a way out beyond death.

Dr Saunders gets back. Boyd and she has been getting it on the last months, that explained a lot.

The Rossum headquarters is in Tusson. And Rossum might have found out where they are, so they come and visit. Boyd have to kill their leader and then run to draw their fire way from the rest. It’s sad when he has to leave.

Chocking when Dr Saunders kill Bennett before Thoper. They think she is a sleeper.

As the final assault happens, Echo imprints on Caroline and Boyd is the leader of Rossum they been looking for, THAT explained a lot more. Especially since he killed the soldier just about to kill Echo.

Sierra and Victor (2.12) returns only to discover that the Dollhouse has been raided and abandoned.

The gang heads to Rossum’s headquarter, while Victor imprints a mysterious personality, Thoper. Victor and Sierra finds out that Boyd is a traitor. Victor/Thoper turn Victor into a one man army.

Dr Saunders is Clyde Randell, the founder they meet in the Attic. She/He apprehend the gang when they arrive. Boyd drugged Caroline/Echo so the gang doesn’t know who he is.

But Caroline wakes up and goes after Boyd. Meanwhile Boyd takes Thoper to the lab where they keep Thopers remote mind control unit and convince him to fix one of them so that it works.

Echo attacks Boyd but are stopped by Dr Saunders. Those two founders are twisted! Echo’s spinal fluid is some kind of vaccine against imprinting. She is trapped and the tapping has begun when Victor comes and rescues her at the last minute.

Dr Saunders and Echo fight it out and it’s no cat fight. The final conflict between Boyd and Echo should have ended with Boyds death, but we never see him die.

Epitaph 2: Return

Epitath continued with the same people as in Epitaph 1. A group of three, Mini Caroline and two others.

They get taken prisoner in Neuropolis. Boyd and Echo are there saving them and the other prisoners. Harding is running Neuropolis, using the tech to keep alive. They kill Harding’s current body and rescue Thoper but, he is pretty far gone. He is working on a solution, making an echo (quite poetic idea considering Echo) that gives people their mind back. But he need tech from the Dollhouse. Then Victor turn up with a battle wagon (that is so Road Warriors), he has become a tech head fighting the war and Sierra is estranged from him. But they join forces and start the trip back to the original Dollhouse.

If they are to keep their memories as actives, they have to shelter in the Dollhouse for a year before coming out after they set off the pulse. But they have to kill their way down the subway. Paul is shot and Echo have to leave him there dead. That didn’t come across as believable to me, would Echo really leave him there?

When they get there Alpha is there in the rebuilt Dollhouse, with actives. He seems a nice guy they apparently parted as friends a few years back when he retreated from the war. The tech heads they brought with have a difference of opinion, they want to continue the war, stealing all the imprints from the Dollhouse and use it in the war. But Echo and Alpha convince them otherwise.

Almost out of the blue Echo have a breakdown when she realize Paul is dead, ranting about Sierra not grabbing a chance to tell Victor how she really feels while she still have it, in reality talking about herself.

Everything gets kind of beautiful and epic there at the end. Thoper is a real hero when he goes up and set off the bomb, It has to be done in person (oh, really?). Adele leads the active out so they can be reset by the pulse, fulfilling Echo’s promise from season one.

Echo imprints Paul, there is room for him in there and now he will never leave her, and walks away from the chair smiling and lays down to sleep in the Dollhouse dormatory.

The End

I would say a decent ending, more closure than most shown, but not awesome.